Since the miniaturization and multilayerization of semiconductor devices have been advanced and the logics of semiconductor devices have also been complicated in recent years, the manufacture of semiconductor devices has become very difficult. As a result, defects owing to the manufacturing process of semiconductor devices frequently tends to occur, therefore it becomes important to accurately inspect these defects. A defect review SEM (defect review-scanning electron microscope: DR-SEM) that reviews defects, and a CD-SEM (critical dimension-SEM) that measures pattern dimensions based on the coordinate information of defects obtained by a higher-level defect inspection apparatus are used for inspecting these defects in detail, and for measuring these defects. These apparatuses performs the inspection and measurement of circuit patterns corresponding to inspection coordinates based on an optical simulation and based on the inspection result of an optical inspection apparatus.
Patent Literatures 1 and 2 disclose a technique in which the shape of a circuit pattern and that of a reference pattern are compared with each other (for example, the deviation between the two patterns are measured) in order to accurately grasp the state of a defect owing to, for example, the optical proximity effect (OPE).